Community colleges work to help students

The hard truth is that most community college students fail at their objectives, whether it's to move on to a four-year college or to get an associate's degree. But local community colleges are working to change that.

In Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties, fewer than half of the community college students tracked over a six-year period transferred, graduated or earned a degree, according to data provided by the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office.

"It's just staggering in its scope, because it's national as a trend," said Raju Hegde, dean of math, English, reading and instructional support at Crafton College. "It's not just local to Crafton or California. "

Those figures are somewhat deceiving, according to Audrey Yamagata-Noji, vice-president of student services at Mt. San Antonio College.

"The statistics at community colleges are always deceiving; so many students come here for reasons other than degree completion," she said. "I think our challenge is: Students who want a degree, certificate or transfer, are they succeeding? "

The recession has famously made it hard for California's students to get classes at all levels of its public colleges. Addressing those bottlenecks is a priority at Mt. SAC.

"What we're trying to do is carefully look at our budget and find room for more classes in our budget," Yamagata-Noji said. "We did open up a number of more course sections" for the spring. College officials expect to do the same in the fall.

Victor Valley College seeks to identify students who aren't ready for college-level math or English before they ever set foot on campus, through their K16 Bridge program.

VVC uses a network of counselors at 23 High Desert high schools to identify students who aren't ready for college-level work and steer them toward programs in their local districts to help catch them up.

To help Crafton students beat the odds, the school created the Left Lane Project earlier this year. Other colleges, including Victor Valley College, have developed similar programs, ahead of a state mandate to roll out such programs by the fall of 2014.

"We know that if you do certain things, you're more likely to be successful," Hegde said.

Among those successful strategies are having an educational plan, use of tutors and participating in a summer bridge program. And Crafton dangled a very big carrot in front of its students in this time of crowded classes:

"We said, 'hey, come out, do these things, we'll make sure you'll get priority registration.' And that turned out to be a big incentive for students," Hegde said.

It's still early days, but the program seems to be working so far, he said.

"Eighty-nine percent of our Left Lane students took a math class in their first semester, instead of 47 percent. We know that one act tends to push students forward. "

Successful community college students tend to take math classes early in their academic career, and continuing to take them.

Left Lane students also passed their classes at a higher rate than their peers: 79 percent versus 72 percent. And 87 percent of Left Lane students returned for the spring semester, compared to 80 percent of their peers.

"That's a good bump for us," Hegde said.

Completing all of their program requirements in the fall semester keeps Crafton students eligible for priority enrollment in spring semester, where the Left Lane program continues.

Mt. SAC has also a six-week summer bridge program, where students take between four and six units, with a better than 90-percent success rate. The students also make room for other students in crowded fall classes: "They're reaching success, and they're not clogging the system in other classes," Yamagata-Noji said.